Diary Entries

Day 6-7

OK it's finally in. Wanted to write this right after submission, but needed some sleep.
Day 6: Finalised the graphical integration of the main game. Bit of work on cut-scenes.
Day 7: Finished cut-scenes and story/intro. Developed "tutorial" system built into the first level to guide the player on how to play. Developed most of the game's level/puzzle content.
Generally speaking, I'm pretty happy with what we got out. As always, there were things that got planned that didn't make the cut: The biggest thing that happened this time was the length of the game/number of levels/quality of level design: it got left a bit too late in the development (last hours of day seven) and it just wasn't enough time to do it properly. It feels like this is always going to be a problem with such a short dev time: this is the major area for improvement for me next comp (I think I said that last comp as well :) ).

Days 1 to 5

OK, quick write up ... has been hectic up until now. We had a pretty good bunch of concepts worked out for all of the potential themes, and I'm pretty happy with how our "The Aftermath" concept is shaping up. We are doing an overhead view tile map real time strategy game when you need to command and control a spacecraft crew after a major disaster has hit the craft while journeying through deep space.
Day 1-3 got a basic engine working for the game play: point-and-click mechanics, path finding using a-star for units (this was such a pleasure to do in python!) ... (thanks to helpful reference: http://theory.stanford.edu/~amitp/GameProgramming/ ), basic game design done. Day 4-5 has been focused on finalising artwork, integrating into game and testing, starting to design UI and title screen cutscenes for story etc.
We are tracking reasonably well, but as always there will be a crunch time tomorrow night :).